


what doesn't kill you

by ilgaksu



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 08:31:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11505594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: Lance doesn’t see Keith until his second day at the Garrison.





	what doesn't kill you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [varsitygeek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/varsitygeek/gifts).



**WELCOME, GALAXY GARRISON CADETS OF 2062!**

 

Lance doesn’t see Keith until his second day at the Garrison. The air-conditioning is broken, according to a third-year hallway monitor, cutting across the dawn roll-call complaints with a roll of her eyes. _Welcome to Arizona,_ she’d drawled, and wandered off, leaving Lance and his new roommate - a soft-eyed Hawaiian kid called Hunk - to drag themselves down to canteen, both asleep on their feet.

“You doing okay, buddy?” Lance asks. Hunk is disconsolately swirling a butter knife across a cemetery of burnt toast.

“Loving life,” Hunk mutters back, all sarcasm. “Can’t you tell?”

To be fair, compared to some of the European contingent, they seem to be coping alright, even if the acrid heat of the yawning desert outside clings to Lance’s skin like dust, a shifting layer between him and his uniform. There’s a rumour the single Finnish student already fainted, during running drills in the grounds yesterday. The newness of his collar, starched to death, digs in like a sticking point. When he looks down at his feet, he can see the reflection of his own eyes, stranger in a strange land, distorted in the polished leather like a Saturday morning cartoon.

Without warning, he can picture the faded teal of the sofa in his family’s apartment, the way it’s worn soft under three generations of bones. The cracked tile under the coffee table and the feel of them under his bare feet, cooling in counterpart to his siblings lolling half-awake and heavy against his side, surrounded by a splay of discarded cereal bowls, juice boxes, a single _cafe con leche_ wisping faint steam -

Homesickness is like a shadow. It’s growing to be a familiar kind of weight.

Looking away from his bowl of rehydrated apple - which is an exercise both in human aspiration and futility at the same time - Lance blinks rapidly, scanning the room and telling himself it’s just jetlag, that he can’t be the crybaby here, that he’s the only Cuban student in sixteen hundred and that makes him lucky -

He spots Keith for the first time. Right now, he’s just a dark head hunched over a muffin, absently picking it apart, pale-handed. He glances over his shoulder, and his face turns out of profile, and -

Lance lets out a low, long whistle.

“Good morning America,” he says, half under his breath. Hunk looks at him, then follows the direction of Lance’s gaze, then looks back at him.

“Dude. It’s been, like, a day.”

“I’m appreciating,” Lance argues, voice low, eyes trained on the boy. “I’m allowed to appreciate.”

“You’re staring, is what you’re doing,” Hunk mutters. He isn’t wrong. Lance shushes him absently. Hunk sighs, loudly, and shoves away his plate of toast.

“Are you gonna finish that?” he asks, pointing out the half-empty cup of filter coffee Lance had forced down.

“Are you gonna finish that?” Lance retorts, pointing at the unfinished toast. “Swapsies?”

“Take it,” Hunk says, too quickly. Lance does, bites into the charred overlayer and winces, and then someone behind them drops their plate and so there’s only one acceptable recourse: Lance bangs on the table with everyone else, his hollering muffled by the toast still between his teeth. He takes it out to yell over at the perpetrator, another first-year from his orienteering group.

“Nice one, Jackson,” Lance informs him, applauding. It’s a difficult task, a balancing act between the toast and the mockery, but Lance has five siblings so has practise.

“Fuck off,” he gets in return, Jackson using the spare hand not picking up the shattered plate to show Lance where to shove it. Lance blows him a kiss, laughing, and turns back.

The boy is staring at him. Lance meets his eyes with a lurching jolt: the kind after you’ve just been strapped into a rollercoaster, goaded into it by your sisters, only to realise exactly the kind of tactical error you’ve made. Only it’s too late, the drop is already happening: you’re already stuck in freefall.  

The problem with that kind of thing is that it feels like seconds, it feels like forever, you’re always in the moment _too long._

 _Whoa,_ Lance thinks. Like, seriously. Some people just have it all, huh. Then, Hunk jabs him in the ribs, hard enough that Lance yelps and drops his toast. Fuck. He manages to catch it again, after a strange juggling act of reflexes and stubbornness. When he’s caught it, accepted his pride is of the same charred quality now, and looked back up, the boy is smiling, both dark eyebrows raised. It does something to his eyes, lights them up somehow, like a candle behind stained glass. Lance’s breath hooks taut in his chest.

 _Shit,_ Lance thinks. _I should do something._ So he winks. He immediately regrets it - heat rising and trapped under his dumb collar - but before he can get a good look at the boy’s reaction, Hunk yanks on his collar insistently.

“Lance,” he says, drawing the _a_ out into an eternity. “We’re going to be late for eval! Hit on Keith on your own time!”

Lance jumps out of his seat on instinct. He leaves the toast as an afterthought, and he’s halfway across the room, hurrying, before his brain catches up to what Hunk’s just actually said, as in the actual words -

“Wait, wait, what,” Lance says, and the high note in his voice is definitely, absolutely not hysteria. It’s hard to regain ground when he’s being forcibly dragged along with Hunk’s broad hand clasped firmly around his wrist.  “Is that - is that Keith as in _Keith Kogane_?”

Hunk stops briefly. Lance nearly slams right into him, but Hunk sidesteps. He gives Lance a long and pitying look.

“Dude,” he says.

“Oh my god,” Lance says. Keith Kogane has been a mystery ever since the entrance scores were made accessible on the database. Lance, jockeying for position at about #23, has stared at the name in careful font next to the frankly ridiculous scoring, jealousy on a slow boil, and he’s not sure who he imagined, really, but not - “Oh my god. I winked at him.”

“At least you didn’t say anything?” Hunk says. It’s almost helpful, until Lance thinks about it. He shoves Hunk.

“Hey!”

They’re late for eval. Lance goes back to staring at his shoes for the rest of the day. Months later, when there’s rumours of Keith disappearing overnight - his locker cleared out and his uniform abandoned - people don’t say _breakdown,_ but they don’t have to. It’s all in their faces. Who gets themselves thrown out of Garrison royalty?

Lance isn’t that surprised. After all, the boy he’d seen had eyes like mutiny.


End file.
